The man is rebel Alliance Commander Col. Joseph Hendricksson (Peter Weller), assigned to protect the Sirius 6B outpost from ravage and plunder at the hands of the New Economic Bloc.

His state-of-the-art weaponry are known as Screamers; manmade killing devices programmed to eliminate all enemy life forms. Screamers travel underground; their intent to kill announced by earpiercing shrieks. They dissect their victims with sushi precision, then eradicate all traces of the carnage. They are lethal. Effective. Tidy.

And, somehow, they are mutating – self-replicating into human form – and slaughtering every beating heart on the planet.